This invention relates generally to gas cooking appliances, and, more specifically, to cooktop grates for gas surface heater elements.
Gas fired cooktops typically include a flat top surface having one or more openings, with a gas burner set in each opening, and a corresponding number of raised cooking grates resting on the cooktop, generally above and surrounding the burners to provide a cooking surface spaced from the burner. Cooking implements such as pots and pans are thus placed on the stove grates above the burners to allow the flame to spread out for increasing the surface actually heated by the gas flames emanating from the burner.
Typically, cooking grates are formed from a round or square outer frame and include a number of long fingers extending radially inwardly from the outer frame. These fingers can be separate members joined at one end to an outer frame, or can be extensions of the outer frame itself. Generally, the fingers do not extend so far inward from the outer frame as to touch at the grate's center. Rather, the inner ends usually form an open area of circular shape about the burner.
An increasingly popular type of cooking grate provides a large, continuous cooking surface to support cooking implements and utensils above virtually the entire cooktop, rather than supporting them only above the vicinity of the burners. To provide the continuous supporting surface, the fingers of the grate and portions of the grate frame extending between the burners are generally coplanar so that a user may slide a cooking utensil across the supporting surface without lifting the utensil. As such, a user may slide a utensil from one burner to another, or rest the utensil in an area between the burners on a stable support surface. In use, however, cooking utensils are placed as concentric as possible over the burners when cooking, which tends to spread the burner flame outward. It has been observed that with the coplanar finger and frame portions that the flame sometimes impinges the frame, which greatly increases operating temperature of the grates and increases carbon monoxide emission from incomplete combustion of gases. Consequently, impingement of the burner flame reduces performance and operative life of the cooktop.